One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Halloween Blogging: Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988)

Upon
viewing Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) again recently, I was struck with an
illuminating thought.

There
are two kinds of horror movies in 1970s and 1980s franchises.

The
first kind of movie is an artistic masterpiece, one that thrives on visual
imagery, on symbolism, and on subtext. In this category, I land movies such as
Halloween (1978), Phantasm (1979), A
Nightmare on Elm Street and Clive Barker’s original masterpiece, Hellraiser
(1987). These films operate on both a
literal level and a metaphorical one.

And
then there’s the second kind of horror movie in these franchises, which viewers
will often detect in the first sequel.

This
second brand of franchise horror film eschews the overt, careful artistry of
the first film and doubles down instead on internal mythology. In other words, the details of the world are
hammered out, and character motivations are more deeply explained. A sketch is
colored in, essentially, but in terms of symbolism some things get lost,
forgotten, or over-written.

Why
do horror franchises from this era operate in this fashion?

Well,
perhaps because symbolic imagery and sub-text may be limited to a specific,
singular narrative or set of characters. That imagery may be beautiful, canny
and informative, yet when time comes for a sequel with a new story, new
characters, and even a new setting, it is hard to sustain it. The zeitgeist has
changed, for one thing, and so symbols change.

Therefore,
intrepid filmmakers turn to the internal consistencies of the world where they
work. Like the idea that Michael Myers must have a concrete motivation for his
murders, and is thus the sibling of Laurie Strode.

Perhaps
this is why sequels so rarely live up to the originals. They don’t pinpoint an
adequate new sub-text or deep imagery to sustain the series. So instead,
additional concrete details are provided.

Yet,
inescapably, familiarity is the enemy of horror. The more we know, the less
scared we become. We are scared not when we know more, but when we no
less.The more vague the details, the
better chance that we will be unsettled by the film.

Hellbound
is the
second kind of movie in terms of this paradigm.

Specifically, Hellbound:
Hellraiser II is a mythology-based, world-building sequel to Clive
Barker’s brilliant horror film, Hellraiser (1987). It’s a good
mythology-based horror film on it own terms, but I miss the sheer artistic
inspiration of Clive Barker’s inaugural film in the franchise.

Hellbound opens with a recap of Hellraiser’s
scary ending, and then shows us the origins of Pinhead (Doug Bradley) himself.
It also finishes off any personal business left lingering between Julia (Clare
Higgins) and Frank (Sean Chapman), before settling down in Hell itself. The details of Hell, and even an evil Deity
(Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth) are all explored.

The
focus, as that description suggests, is on deepening and broadening the Hellraiser
universe. The focus is on providing more details, and revealing a consistent “universe.”

I
can’t complain too much, however since the solid 1988 sequel shows audiences how
Cenobites are manufactured, takes us to Hell for a grand tour, features the
great Ashley Laurence in a starring role, and reveals to us precisely the kind
of torment in Hell that Frank deserves.
There’s an overall reflection of literary mythology too -- an Orphean descent into the Underworld to
retrieve a loved one -- but even that is broadly applied.

So
by my estimation, Hellbound is a good horror film, of the second type.

It’s
just that traveling from Hellraiser to Hellbound is roughly akin
to going from Phantasm (1979) to Phantasm II (1988).

The
first film in each series is richly symbolic and reveals something about the
human condition, whether the fear of mortality, or mankind’s sexual obsessions.

Then
the ambitious sequel comes along, and it’s big and world-building and totally
impressive as a straight-up horror flick, but it exists almost purely on a literal
level, not a symbolic one.

Therefore,
in comparison to the original, I can’t help but register the sequel as a bit of
a disappointment, or at least a come down. I admire so much the rarefied,
symbolic level of Hellraiser and Phantasm.

This
is about me, as much as the film, a reader might conclude. I want my horror
movies to do more than just scare me a little, like I’m on a roller coaster
ride. I want the movie to concern or reflect something important; something
that makes me think about the world, myself, and my relationships.

So
I miss Clive Barker’s facility for visual symbolism in Tony Randel’s Hellbound,
but I still like the sequel for what it is (a rip-roaring, gory horror movie),
even if, at times, the movie looks to be held together by little more than spit
and polish.

“The mind is a
labyrinth…a puzzle.”

Following
the ghoulish events with Julia and Frank, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is remanded
to the Channard Institute, an insane asylum.

There,
she talks about the box, and doorways to Hell being opened and closed.

Listening
intently to her strange tale is Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), a man who has
devoted his life to the study of the Lament Configuration.

Another
patient in his custody, young Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) is mute, but is an
expert at solving puzzles. Presumably, he has in mind for this ward to solve
one particular puzzle box.

Even
as Dr. Channard takes gruesome steps to revive Julia (Clare Higgins), Kirsty receives
a message that she believes is from her dead father. “I am
in Hell. Help me,” it reads, written in blood.

Kirsty
determines to go with Tiffany, into Hell, and rescue her father.

After
Tiffany opens the box, Channard meets his fate as a Cenobite, and engineers a
coup of the Labyrinth. Kirsty helps
Pinhead (Doug Bradley) finds his humanity for one battle against this new
cenobite, but it does not go well.

After
an encounter with Frank, Kirsty must summon all her resourcefulness to escape
Hell, and more than that, stop Channard.

“What tales will
she tell us from the other side?”

In
a significant fashion, Hellbound really is about tales from
the “other side.”

The
other world that we saw only briefly in Hellraiser, Hell itself, is depicted
for long stretches of the film. Some of the visuals are generally amazing,
while others prove a letdown.

The
matte painting, for instance, of the labyrinth, looks astonishingly good. There
are several shots which reveal Kirsty and Tiffany walking a long, narrow pathway
across that Escher-like maze. The maze extends to the horizon, but also stretches
downwards, across multiple levels.

Also
successfully depicted is Frank Cotton’s personal hell. He lives in a room where ghostly women “promise”
sex but never “deliver.”To Frank, this is a punishment on the scale of
Tantalus, and quite appropriate. He lives, essentially, in a trap that will
drive him mad for all eternity. And that’s
the reason he summoned Kirsty. He believes she’s a girl who keeps her “promises,”
and wants to test that theory.

Unfortunately,
when we don’t see the big matte shots, or visit Frank in his personal Hell, the
underworld is depicted in less than inspiring fashion.

In
fact it appears to consist of one hallway that branches off, and is filmed
again and again. At one point, we get a P.O.V. shot with the camera hurtling
through the corridor, and before the editor can cut away, it looks like there
are some boards or lumber balanced against one wall.

This
section of Hell: under construction.

When
one couples shots like this one with the fact that Chatterer’s make-up design
completely changes at one point, with no explanation, one gets the feeling that
the film was made in a tearing hurry, and suffered from a lot of tinkering
with.

Tiffany’s
weird hall-of-mirrors/carnival scene is similarly crude in visualization, and
doesn’t really add anything to the proceedings. Did she lose her Mom at a
carnival? The sequence never makes us understand why this circus-like place is
Tiffany’s personal Hell, or why she is permitted to escape it.

On
the plus side, the Cenobite-making chamber is radically evil and neat, though
it proves a stumbling block in future entries since it isn’t, apparently,
required to make Cenobites after all.

And
though I wonder about the rationale of making Leviathan a huge puzzle box, I nonetheless
love the deeply creepy black light it periodically shines across the realm. Instead of a lighthouse, Leviathan is a dark-house,
shining darkness throughout every corner of Hell.

To
get back to my treatise on mythology, Hellbound feels duty-bound to give
us a lot of information. It provides background
on Pinhead, revealing his pre-Cenobite life. We learn he was a British soldier
in World War I, and Hell on Earth, the next installment, even tells us his name.

We
also get to reconnect in the film, powerfully, with Clare Higgins’ Julia. Once
more, she gives voice to the film’s intermittent motif about literary mythology
(seen in the Orpheus-like story and in the damnations of Hell being like the
torments of Tantalus or Sisyphus). Here, Julia relevantly notes her role in the
myth; that she is both the “wicked stepmother” and “evil queen” in Kirstie’s
fairy tale. I love that Julia, formerly repressed and frigid, internalizes this
role and emerges from Hell as a siren, a seductress.

Again,
however, one has to wonder about the discontinuities between the two films, vis-à-vis
revival via human blood. Frank had new skin after three strangers and Larry were
killed in the first film. Julia in Hellbound kills a room full of
prostitutes, and still doesn’t have all her new skin yet.

Another
scene in the film is also incongruous. It shows a hospital ward of insane
patients being tortured by many copies of the Lament Configuration, even after
Pinhead has verbally confirmed that desire, not hands, call him. The scene
doesn’t make any sense, in light of that remark.

Yet Hellbound’s
heights of imagination generally tend to overcome such deficits. A
movie would really have to go some distance to prove itself bloodier and gorier
than Hellraiser
was. Hellbound manages that feat
with ease. The scene involving a straight razor, a bloody mattress, and a very
sick man, is one for the record books.

The
Channard Cenobite is hugely creative too, for example. Who in his or her right
mind devised an individual who is carried around by a giant worm that has
burrowed into that individual’s head? The conception and imagery of the
character is remarkable.

If
the final battle between Channard and Pinhead’s team had featured a little more
punch, a little more suspense, I’d rate the film even higher. I very much enjoy the scenes of Kirsty and
Pinhead teaming up, as it were, but I wish Pinhead put up a better fight before
getting his throat slit.

As
it stands, Hellbound is a perfectly satisfying mythology-based horror
sequel. For those who “have to see, have
to know…” -- like Channard -- the movie both promises and delivers.

For
those audiences seeking a film functioning at at the same artistic apex as Hellraiser
does, however, this first sequel may not exactly qualify as a “pleasure.”

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About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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